Good morning and welcome to the daily blog from the Guardian's community for healthcare professionals, offering a roundup of the key news stories across the sector.

If there's a story, report or event you'd like to highlight – or you would like to share your thoughts on any of the healthcare issues in the news today – you can get in touch by leaving a comment below the line or tweeting us at @GdnHealthcare.

The Guardian reports on a warning by Macmillan Cancer Support that older cancer patients are being "written off" because of their age. The charity says some patients are being deemed as too old for treatment and are not assessed on their overall fitness.

There's also news that public sector organisations are to be rebuked by the Commons public accounts committee for using gagging clauses and payoffs when getting rid of employees for poor performance or when staff leave after raising concerns about patient safety. Healthcare correspondent Denis Campbell writes that the highly critical report into confidentiality clauses and special severance payments accuses organisations, including some in the NHS, of putting their reputation before the need to protect the public.

The strongest indicator that the tightrope between cutting spending and maintaining quality is wobbling badly, is the serious loss of staff morale throughout the NHS. Despite the immediacy of the budget pressures, when the King's Fund asked finance directors to identify their biggest performance concern it was this issue, not A&E targets, treatment times or delayed transfers, that they most feared.

While the best trusts work relentlessly to engage clinical staff in programmes of service improvement and change, many clinicians feel disconnected from the decisions being taken around them, and see little relevance to their everyday work of the ceaseless output of plans, guidance and targets from regulators and NHS England. They do not understand how the system works, and feel its presence more as an impediment to good care than an ally in doing their best for patients. Too often it feels as if they are working for the patients, but against the NHS superstructure.

We've also a mini interview with Miles Scott, chief executive of St George's healthcare NHS trust, who says the health service's biggest challenge is figuring out how to get more from less. He says:

The NHS hasn't faced the financial cuts local government is struggling with, but does have to contend with a population that is growing bigger, living longer and beset by increasingly complex health conditions.